Polar Bears, Politics, & Prognostications

By Jim Beers

CHICKENS & POLAR BEARS - Jim Beers answers reader comments: please click here

In spite of 800+ e-mails to sort through and a pile of notes (made over the past 4 months for future articles and a play) next to my computer, something caught my eye as I skimmed all those e-mails after unpacking last night. A friend that is a renowned expert on international wildlife law asked me the following question in one of those e-mails:

"I'd be most interested in your opinion on the USF&WS's polar bear listing proposal. The IUCN's Polar Bear Specialist Group is practically in the driver's seat as their immediate past chairman is writing it and cites the present chair over a hundred times."

This is an insightful question, the answer to which provides an opportunity to say some things that are important but are too often unmentioned. There are 3 parts to my "opinion":

I. POLAR BEARS

Polar bears are doing just fine and have been doing fine for as long as we know. The passage of The Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972 took authority to manage (and therefore hunt) polar bears in the United States away from the state of Alaska and placed it under Federal jurisdiction. There was NO biological reason to do this: it was strictly a political shift in US Constitutional principles (states rights and the ownership and use of wildlife). Federal seizure of authority over all other marine mammals at this time was also accompanied by wording in the Act that management authority (for walruses, sea otters, manatees, and seals within in state controlled areas) would be returned to state governments when "OSP" (Optimum Sustainable Populations) were "achieved". Over 35 years now, OSP has never been achieved and both US national and international policies regarding ALL marine mammals have been policies of no-management, no-use, and total protection. Marine Mammals, like "Endangered" races and sub-populations of animals and varieties of plants, have become little more than the tools of environmental and animal rights agendas that are subverting far more aspects of society than environmental matters.

Polar bear hunts in not only Canada but also Greenland and Russia have been made impossible for US hunters since US policy under the Act has prohibited the importation of polar bear hides that are the trophies that wealthy hunters seek. This has reduced the amount of income available for many northern indigenous people and for the management of polar bears since licenses and hunting expenditures for polar bears (like sheep hunting and African trophy hunts) are high-end trips that cost a lot.

Suddenly, the cynical political exploitation of this animal (like the analogous manipulation of wolves, extinct woodpeckers, and lynx, etc.) has been, to quote Emeril the chef, "kicked up a notch". Just as the non-existent Ivory-billed Woodpecker was used to stop an airport expansion and modern wolf mythology is being used to eliminate hunting and ranching and rural livelihoods; so is the polar bear now being used not only to eliminate wildlife management and hunting but to implement a national US policy that has been rejected by the US government.

The US policy involved here is US acquiescence to the harmful, draconian, and ineffectual provisions of the Kyoto Protocol to "reduce" "global warming". Despite all the current posturing and kibitzing by politicians, the US Senate and the last two Presidents have wisely avoided ratifying this "Treaty" that would disadvantage and harm the US for strictly political purposes. However, just as jumping mice are being used to stop development in the West and plovers are being used to establish Federal land control over Platte River water users and unmanaged and overpopulated seals and sea lions are being used to eliminate sport fishing so too is the proposal to "List" the polar bear a bold and innovative move that sets an extremely dangerous new precedent, namely that a mere Federal assertion that some portion of a wild animal's habitat is changing is sufficient to "List" the animal.

What the Federal government is asserting is that the "pack ice" in some areas of the polar ice cap is diminishing and that since polar bears inhabit (only part of the year) this pack ice they "must" be "Listed". Now I could write pages here about their numbers and their adaptability but I won't. I could be sarcastic about the explosion of seal and sea lion numbers (polar bears eat them) that resulted from total protection of these animals and how the polar bears ought to be fat, dumb, and happy but I won't. I could write about how polar habitats have changed throughout history and how polar bears have "weathered" changes but I won't. I could write about how ice is decreasing here but increasing there but I won't. Anything I say would be countered by some University professor on a grant or some bureaucrat building a retirement or some social radical disguised as a "Marine Center" or "Marine Council" "Executive Secretary" or some such title. Why? Because this has NOTHING to do with science or facts, it is POLITICAL. So lets look at the politics involved.

II. POLITICS

The IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) is a European creation that fronts for the UN and for European Union Green political parties and their agendas. These groups all work to control the 3rd World nations through UN assertions implemented through UN Conventions and Treaties that, like US environmental and animal rights laws and other such laws like gun control proposals, are proposed as solutions for some contrived problem and once passed are grown beyond the wildest fears of opponents or the claims of supporters. The IUCN, like the UN bureaucracy and the European Union (and Russia, China, and India) want the US to commit to the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol. Their reasons vary from gaining competitive economic advantage over and even control of the US to a desire by individuals and even some nations to destroy the US for a variety of reasons.

The only nation in the world where a "Treaty" becomes absolutely "the Law of the Land" is the United States. That is why the Endangered Species Act (based on a UN Convention that the US Courts define as a "Treaty") can take private property for a non-public use without compensation. Just as the spotted owl "Listing" authorized the government to prohibit logging in West Coast forests and red-cockaded woodpecker "Listing" did the same for logging in the South, so too will polar bear "Listing" hobble the US economy on behalf of the un-ratified Kyoto Protocol.

It will work like this. The polar bear will be "Listed" formally because of the gradual diminishment of polar pack ice. Though the data for this will be "selectively" presented, the clear and legal wording will present this as widespread and DUE TO GLOBAL WARMING. To quote a famous detective, "the rest Watson, is academic".

Once the polar bear is "Listed" you better not stand near any public entrance to US Courthouses. The stampede of environmental ambulance chasers from Defenders of Wildlife and Natural Resources Defense Council to the National Wildlife Federation and PETA into the Courts will match what Lewis and Clark saw when they first encountered buffalo on the Great Plains. New automobile mileage requirements must be raised and raised because they create global warming WHICH ENDANGERS POLAR BEARS. Single-family home construction must be reduced for the same reason. Roads must be closed and public transportation mandated for the same reason. I could go on here but truly the list will grow (even in the minds of the radicals and their solicitors) as they get into this. Think this is absurd? Ask the guy driving the cab in LA that used to be in an Oregon logging family in a town that no longer exists. Ask the security guard at the bank that used to be a commercial fisherman or the guy eating pretzels in front of the TV that used to fish and hunt. Think it can't happen to you? Think it would be "good for America"?

So who is responsible? Here we must get "political".

[I apologize ahead of time. Believe it or not I go to great lengths to not be "political" but one cannot describe these matters without examining this very important aspect. To be truthful here, I have had had at least 3 speaking engagements that I know of in the past 12 months fall through because many folks think I am "too political". With this in mind, I try very hard not to turn readers off here but it can't be avoided in a thorough examination of the proposed polar bear "Listing".]

The current Secretary of the Interior is a Republican and former Senator and Governor from Idaho. He is a "moderate" and known to always be "reaching out" to "the middle". His Republican staff assistants at Interior are of a similar mold and are urged on by employees that believe strongly in the Kyoto Protocols as well as anything that will grow the Federal bureaucracy, budget, and their careers.

Last November the few Republican politicians that would have opposed this polar bear "Listing" were decimated at the polls, largely due to massive spending campaigns by environmental groups. The few such politicians still in office are ridiculed in the media and vilified by teachers. It is noteworthy to mention that this "Listing" was publicized after the election.

If this is a Republican "plot", what about the loyal opposition (i.e. the Democrats)? It is a fact that today's Democrats encompass the environmental groups and their agendas. They are also the home of the animal rights, groups and their agendas. They are the Party favored by the European Union politicians and bureaucracy. They are the most favored Party of the UN bureaucracy. They are the most comfortable Party with a growing Federal establishment. The bottom line is that there is no "opposition" to this continuing expansion of environmental and animal legislation and regulation or this polar bear "Listing".

III. PROGNOSTICATIONS

Who can we look to, to turn back this polar bear "Listing"?

Environmental and animal rights "feel-good" proposals like this polar bear "Listing" are "throw-away" political matters. For 40 years now politicians get votes and support from large swaths (mostly urban) of the population for "saving" things. Like the old saw about "don't tax him and don't tax me, tax that guy behind the tree": all of us have become immune to the harm we do our neighbor by using the Federal behemoth to force others to live as we imagine best or as we want them to live. (Shades of the European Union toward the 3rd World or of the UN toward the US!)

The Republicans have 3 front-runners for the Presidential nomination. All three are termed "metro-Republicans" meaning they are not rural or rural-oriented. Republicans that pander to environmentalism (Ex-Senator Santorum sponsored "Puppy Protection" legislation and ex-Senator Allen sponsored "Historic Heritage" legislation) appear to lose rural votes and not gain urban votes.

Democrats are, at this moment in time, the Party of choice for groups and individuals that want "more" Wilderness, Sanctuaries, Government land purchase, and animal "Listings". There are some Democrats (I wrote an article lauding one Democrat Senatorial candidate in Louisiana for having the intestinal fortitude to defend the property right of Louisiana residents to continue to legally have cockfights) that would oppose things like "Listing" polar bears but they are seldom elected.

So both Parties support these bad laws and their steady expansion. Currently, there are not any organized opponents to these expanding abuses on the horizon. As best I can determine the same thing was said about Prohibition at one time and that was reversed by a Constitutional Amendment.

Truly the electorate is part of the problem too. Do ranchers help hunters? Do dog owners understand their stake in the denial of rights to cockfighters? Do gun owners help land owners oppose UN land control schemes? Do pet owners see the threat to pet ownership emerging from all the "humane" laws and animal "welfare" enforcement bureaucracies? Who really feels that they have a dog in the polar bear "Listing" fight? Who will step up to the plate?

Not to be too negative, but even if some Interior Solicitor or some White House administrator were to kill the polar bear "Listing" tomorrow: it would probably be reinstated by any of the appointees of a President elected out of the pack running at this time. The problem is these LAWS now in place and their manipulation and growth for a myriad of hidden agendas.

Those laws must be amended or repealed and that must be done POLITICALLY. Until that happens we will be all be like Nero, fiddling while things burn down all around us. Polar bear "Listing" is but a symptom of a much larger disease. Making the symptom go away is no cure. Searching for the real cure is something we should all be doing.

Jim Beers
19 March 2007
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- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.